Ships & Modules

Canes online got nerfed. The navy cane can still do what the old cane did.

with cane CCP went above and beyond the other BC nerfs. They made sure , with extreme prejudice, dual neut o cane would not come back. SLot removal, check. Grid castration just in case someone said who needs full rack of guns to run neuts again, check. TE nerf, check. TE did affect other races but...its clear who that was meant for. And no, it sure as hell wasn't lolrox.

Not a bad thing to remove dual neut o cane....it just made other fits a pita as well.

Drake's nerf as I recall minimal. Not even a nerf really. They saved real gimpjng for drake (and tengu) with hml nerf.

Perhaps... what you're looking for are compact heavy missile launchers? Arbalest and malkuth might suit your needs

CCP cannot balance their ship lines to save their lives. Even when they got close a couple years ago with tiericide and rebalance passes, they almost immediately flushed the whole thing down the toilet when they dropped T3D's and Mordus ships. Overnight classes that had barely gotten to shine were once again relegated to mothballs because 'balance' to CCP means that out of all the ships in the game, about half a dozen are actually useful at any given time.
To be honest, it's not that all the other ships are useless. It's just that some are so demonstrably better at a given task that flying anything else is a self-imposed gimp. It's like still having tiers, but it's just not called that now.

There is little reason to fly a BC in Eve. The current meta in Eve clearly favors speed and mobility. Combine the cruiser class's ability to move, align, and warp faster than a BC-- yet retain nearly BS sized tank and gank-- means BC's in general are at best a niche class of ship. The tier 3 versions are good for structure bashing but it's been ages since I've seen a significant number of BCs in a null sec PvP fleet.

Another reason is power (and wealth) creep. As another poster mentioned-- BC's used to be cheap fun but still pretty effective. However, few alliances worth their recruiting adverts these days worry about income. Once upon a time seeing a T3 cruiser in a fleet meant someone had money to burn....but now entire fleets of nothing but T2/T3 ships are commonplace. I looked at my own hangar the other day and realized the only T1 ship I even owned was still a pirate faction vessel. Everything else is T2/T3. Neither price nor SP are remotely a barrier anymore given isk faucets and skill injection- and are no longer much excuse to NOT just fly the T2/T3 ships.

Well, I dunno. Seems like they are being actively flown right now as cheap alpha ships to zerg rush things like T3s, for example. I'm not an expert here though.

Also, you have to remember the relative power of the cane back then compared to now. Even if the cane didnt get nerfed it wouldnt be everywhere.

Back then the cane actually was faster then almost all t1 cruisers, and all cruisers did way less damage then they do now and they also had no tank at all + kiting wasnt as easy as it is now, amarr ships sucked in general so while scorch was op it didnt translate that into power due to the ships being really bad, the buff to rails and beams didnt happen yet and rlmls were **** and people all used hmls. And the cane also was about as agile as a t1 cruiser and warped just as fast so offgrid mobility was the same as t1 cruisers.



In relative terms a cane back then, compared to what it would be now, would be a ship that goes 2km/s preheat with just a mwd fit, deals 900dps with a 80k ehp tank while dealing 60% of that damage at 30km while tracking fine up close, with 2 utility medium neuts while having 0 cap issues - that also warps as fast as a cruiser. (relatively speaking, of it power level now and back then) And a ship right now with those stats with a cost of 20 million isk after insurance would still be flown everywhere.


Stuff didnt have as much tank back then and kiting weapons, as said before, sucked in general while the cane pre te nerf actually could kite somewhat just with 425s and barrage.


Also, and this played a big part, frigs were garbage back then. The rifter in a weaker form as it is now was the undisputed borderline Op frigate back then, and the jag and ishkur as they are now were by far the best AFs. And that was basicely it, with the ranis also making a appearance.

Gunboats in general aren't that common anymore.